Skateboarder rides into business world

Ronnie Creager, a professional skateboarder who was born in Orange, currently overlooks his own skateboard product company, Etcetera Project, which focuses on different necessities for skateboarders including shoe insoles, ankle stabilizers and other products. KEVIN LARA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Etcetera Project products

•Low-profile (thin) and high-profile (thick) Primo insoles

•Marc Johnson's signature low-profile all-black Primo insole

•Ronnie Creager's signature high-profile Primo insole

•Wall Ride – a metal mount from which skateboards hang

•Ankle stabilizers

•Lace belts

•Knee pads used by skateboard videographers

Ronnie Creager, wearing a black, bent-billed ball cap, takes a seat on a stepstool inside his modest warehouse – a detached two-car garage tucked away on his property in Placentia.

Surrounding Creager, who is sipping decaf coffee and coughing sporadically – rest cardboard boxes, identified by a sequence of numbers. Some are stacked two, three high. Handfuls are open, revealing bevies of packaged white insoles – his signature line.

"I've wanted to do a company forever," admits the 39-year-old. "I've been a sponsored skater my whole life ... and I always wanted to be my own boss and do my own thing.

"I never really knew what or how to, though."

Creager has been a professional skateboarder since turning 18. He skated long before that, of course, while growing up in Orange.

"I didn't think that I deserved it, being pro," says Creager, who began his career with Foundation Skateboards. "You had to be good, and I couldn't keep up with all the people that I saw in my head as pro; this elite group of skaters."

To Creager's right sits a 4-foot-high sticker machine. It cost nearly $5,000.

"This is the warehouse," Creager says. "I'm the shipping manager, the customer service, the public relations; this is where I come out to ship everything out."

Once, it was all about skateboarding. In one contest alone, long ago, he made $20,000. Now, skateboarding is his job, although a more traditional one. Etcetera is Creager, the promoter, and friend Marty Shadoan, the designer. The 2-year-old company is grossing $10,000 a month.

"I want to get Etcetera as big as I can," Creager says. "I'll skateboard my whole life, until I can't anymore, but I want to have a desk job when my career is over."

He has skated since he was 3, through El Modena High and Richland Continuation High in Orange, where he earned his diploma.

"I didn't ditch school all the time, but skating was what I wanted to be doing," Creager says. "I was just going to school because I had to. ... All I wanted to do was skate. I'd skate to school, and when school got out I was out on my board, out with friends, skating, trying tricks."

Creager, an expectant father and fiancée, gets up to rummage around his warehouse in search of the seven different skateboarding products Etcetera sells. The biggest sellers are insoles, which skaters slip into their shoes to protect their vulnerable arches. His signature insole lists at $21.95.

"We're just trying to make stuff that all these companies in skateboarding haven't touched," Creager said. "We jumped on it because we knew what people needed. ... All the stuff we make is for problems that I've seen in skateboarding."

Creager – these days sponsored by Blind Skateboards along with a host of other clothing sponsors – still remembers seeing his first personalized board on Foundation – a fun rendition of the Trix rabbit eating a bowl of Trix with dead bodies sprawled about in the background.

Ronnie Creager, a professional skateboarder who was born in Orange, currently overlooks his own skateboard product company, Etcetera Project, which focuses on different necessities for skateboarders including shoe insoles, ankle stabilizers and other products. KEVIN LARA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Ronnie Creager holds his signature insole, one of the many products produced by his company Etcetera Project. KEVIN LARA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Ronnie Creager's signature insole. KEVIN LARA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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